The Distributional Consequences of Large Devaluations

Javier Cravino and Andrei Levchenko

American Economic Review, 2017, vol. 107, issue 11, 3477-3509

Abstract: We study the impact of large exchange rate devaluations on the cost of living at different points on the income distribution. Poor households spend relatively more on tradeable product categories and consume lower-priced varieties within categories. Changes in the relative price of tradeables and of lower-priced varieties affect the cost of living of low-income relative to high-income households. We quantify these effects following the 1994 Mexican devaluation and show that they can have large distributional consequences. Two years post-devaluation, the cost of living for the bottom income decile rose 1.48 to 1.62 times more than for the top income decile.

JEL-codes: D12 D31 E31 F31 O12 O19 O24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20151551
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (66)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20151551 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=5678 (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... kLdCuQTYJXoiZvA2roOK (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... Tee1_M15Ogk-y6n7DrIF (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Distributional Consequences of Large Devaluations (2017)
Working Paper: The Distributional Consequences of Large Devaluations (2017)
Working Paper: The distributional consequences of large devaluations (2016)
Working Paper: The Distributional Consequences of Large Devaluations (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:107:y:2017:i:11:p:3477-3509

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().